This is a combo deck, which turns everybody's lands into Swamps, then hurts them for having Swamps.
Win Conditions
There are two primary win conditions, both of which require
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
to be in play:
- Punish everyone for having land via
Karma
or
Stern Judge
- Attack with a powerful
Crusading Knight
or
Angry Mob
Assembling the Combo
Along with two each of
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
,
Karma
, and
Stern Judge
, you also have four land tutors and enchantment tutors:
- Land --
Expedition Map
allows you to grab nonbasic lands. If you already have the Tomb, you can just grab yourself more Plains.
- Enchantments --
Enlightened Tutor
is the one and only guy for this job! If you already have a
Karma
, then there are several other enchantments you can grab (including a second Karma.... twice the punishment!).
Staying Alive
While you're waiting for the combo, and especially once you get it and everybody is targeting you, several cards help keep you alive:
-
Personal Sanctuary
keeps you safe from
Karma
, and should be the second enchantment on your list to get. Note that it does not keep you safe from
Stern Judge
.
-
Landbind Ritual
offers direct lifegain, and easily outpaces
Karma
.
-
Kami of False Hope
can negate even the biggest, deadliest attacks. This will force your opponents into making useless attacks just to use him up, buying you a turn.
-
Children of Korlis
is useful not only in stabilizing you after an attack, but more importantly will make up the life lost from
Karma
and
Stern Judge
(especially the latter).
-
Gideon's Lawkeeper
sticks around after Kami is gone to ward off the biggest attackers.
-
Hopeful Eidolon
can serve as a chump blocker, but really shines as lifegain added to your bigger dudes.
- Finally,
Ranger of Eos
is the tutor to grab the previous four dudes.
No Combo in Sight?
If you can at least get
Armored Ascension
and/or
Hopeful Eidolon
attached to one of your bigger guys, then between your big, lifelinked flier and several layers of Kami and the Children, you'll present a formidable enough defense to hopefully stall long enough.
However, it is usually worth it to mulligan once or twice to try to get some combination of the combo pieces and/or the appropriate tutors. You can get the combo up and running by turn 4 with the ideal hand (3x Plains, 1x Urborg, 1x Personal Sanctuary, 1x Karma), but you don't want it up later than turn 7.
Possible Improvements
I tried to keep the deck cheap to buy, but found I needed a couple expensive cards (not including Urborg) to make the deck function:
Ranger of Eos
and particularly
Enlightened Tutor
. If you are willing to spend more money, some possible replacements for the 1-drop creatures I included are listed in the Maybeboard.
If you are playing against decks that feature creature removal, then you could replace
Kami of False Hope
with
Ethereal Haze
or the like.
Feeling of Dread
and
Blinding Beam
can replace
Gideon's Lawkeeper
. And
Cloudshift
will make it hard to target your creatures, and also allows you to block with them and then remove them from combat.
Please suggest other improvements!
